My invention is directed to a mechanism for automatically and rapidly forming food items such as meatballs and fillings for egg rolls. Because these items are formed from viscous flowable materials such as chopped and shredded meats and vegetables, it should be apparent that my mechanism is also capable of forming other types of viscous flowable materials into desired shapes.
The principal object of my invention is a mechanism that can automatically and rapidly form food items into practically any desirable shape, with the shape of possible items being limited only by the availability of a mold for the desired shape.
Accordingly, another object of my invention is a mechanism that can be used to form a substantially cylindrical-shaped egg roll filling and automatically feed it to an egg roll forming mechanism of the type shown in my U.S. Pat. No. 4,913,043, issued Apr. 3, 1990. Specifically, a cylindrical egg roll filling may be delivered from the mechanism of my present invention onto the square sheet of dough in the second step of the method described in my issued patent.
Still another object of my invention is a mechanism using molds to form the shaped items, which molds may be easily changed so as to create different shaped items using the same forming mechanism.
Yet another object of my invention is a mechanism that molds viscous flowable materials, such as meat and foods, into irregularly-shaped items and then finishes the irregularly-shaped items into spheres.
Other objects of my invention may be found in the following specification, claims and drawings.